George Tarburton has one word -- actually, a contraction -- for anyone who might feel the urge to blow the whistle on official wrongdoing, government waste or chronic problems in the workplace: Don't.
"It's not worth it," Tarburton says. "You'll just get screwed."
Tarburton, once a cop with the Maryland Transportation Authority, learned this lesson the hard way. He blew the whistle on lapses in security in the port of Baltimore and lost his job for it.
Tarburton was a source for a Sun reporter who, four years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, examined the state of security around the nation's eighth-largest port.
The Sun published a comprehensive, front-page story on the subject in July 2005, just three days after the terrorist attacks on London's transit system.
Tarburton, a veteran officer frustrated with deteriorating conditions at the port, was one of several sources who spoke with Sun reporter Michael Dresser on condition that they not be identified. Tarburton wanted the story told, but he didn't want to lose his $56,000-a-year job.
His name did not appear in print.
The Sun's story pointed out laughable flaws in port security -- dilapidated fences, malfunctioning alarms, surveillance cameras that didn't work, unattended gates left wide open for trucks and trains, and new patrol boats that hardly left the dock.
Many police officials familiar with the port apparently agreed with The Sun's assessment.
But the report embarrassed the Ehrlich administration, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police and its chief at the time, Gary McLhinney.
McLhinney wanted to find the cops who'd snitched and bring them up on charges of violating departmental policy. (Who knew the cops had a no-snitch policy, too?)
An internal investigation followed, McLhinney's staff smoked out the leak, and Tarburton admitted to being Dresser's source. He said he'd cooperated with the newspaper because written reports to department superiors about security lapses had become a waste of time. (The newspaper account led to changes, repairs and a higher level of security around the port in just a matter of weeks.)
Tarburton refused to divulge the names of other port employees whom he knew to have spoken with The Sun.
They, on the other hand, apparently had no trouble giving Tarburton up.
Just four days after The Sun's report, Tarburton was stripped of his badge, gun, police powers and his anticipated promotion to corporal. His superiors banished him to a desk job at a truck weigh station in Cecil County.
Eventually, Tarburton was charged with having divulged sensitive security information without going through proper channels. (Apparently, a frustrated cop is expected to take his story to the media relations department.)
"Why are they attacking me when I'm just trying to point out these things that could have serious consequences to the public?" Tarburton said at the time, complaining that his superiors were "more worried about department policies and procedures and image than the issue at hand -- homeland security."
Tarburton went to Baltimore Circuit Court to challenge the department's attempts to fire him; he lost there, in May 2006. He did not appeal the decision.
A few months later, Tarburton decided to resign and agreed to go quietly -- he would not reapply for a job with the transportation authority, he would neither sue the state nor make any claims or demands.
"I signed that [resignation] agreement under duress," Tarburton says now. "They forced me to sign it or be fired."
He's 44 years old. He had 19 years with the department. He hasn't been able to find another job in law enforcement. He's employed as a security officer in a residential development in Baltimore County, making $14 an hour, without benefits, and working the 6 p.m.-to-2 a.m. shift.
"I spoke to [Martin] O'Malley about this," Tarburton says. "It was seven days before the general election [in November 2006]. He and [Lt. Gov.] Anthony Brown were campaigning at the rededication of the Lansdowne volunteer firehouse. I went up to O'Malley and introduced myself, and he said, 'I remember you,' and he said what happened to me was wrong and, 'I support whistleblowers.'"
O'Malley also had been a vocal champion of homeland security. As mayor of Baltimore, he criticized the Bush administration for not doing enough to make the nation's ports safe from terrorists.
If elected Maryland governor, Tarburton claims, O'Malley promised to look into his case.
O'Malley has been governor since January 2007. He did as promised -- someone in the new administration looked into Tarburton's situation after the former transportation authority cop wrote letters requesting his job back.
But if O'Malley felt that Tarburton had been the victim of vindictive superiors in the previous administration, if he thought this whistleblower should have been protected or had acted in the interest of homeland security, then he hasn't acted with executive authority to make things right.
"The governor accepted the recommendation of his chief legal counsel and the Maryland Transportation Authority Police," says Rick Abbruzze, O'Malley's spokesman.
That means no job for George Tarburton.
"As a result of the settlement agreement and your resignation," an assistant attorney general wrote to Tarburton in May 2007, "you are ineligible for re-employment with the Maryland Transportation Authority."
Tarburton is stuck there -- he signed off on any future claims, for a job or compensation, when he resigned his position.
"I should never have opened my mouth," Tarburton says. "And I would tell anyone thinking of doing the same, of being a whistleblower. I would say, 'Don't do it.' It's not worth it."
dan.rodricks@baltsun.com
Dan Rodricks can be heard on "Midday" from noon to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays on 88.1, WYPR-FM.